Gou said Foxconn is making preparations for iTV, Apple Inc’s rumored upcoming high-definition television, although development or manufacturing has yet to begin.

iTV reportedly features an aluminum construction, Siri, and FaceTime video calling

Foxconn’s recent 50-50 joint venture factory with Sharp in Japan is one of the preparations made for the new device, Gou added.

As I see it, Apple’s hypothetical television has to perform two distinct functions, which all TVs sold today do. Interestingly, it’s irrelevant as to whether they produce an actual TV, or just another box. The success of it is dependent on the ability to perform these two tasks.

The first reason one watches TV is to catch a specific show. Apple can nail that with their content provider contracts, because networks and studios need that level of far-reaching distribution in the future. They need to make it affordable, though.

Cable TV is around $30 per month. The price of an iTunes season pass varies, but it’s also around $30, and a season is 20-24 episodes long. In simple, slightly-bullshit math, that’s 5-6 months, or $150-180 worth of cable. If you watch 5-6 shows regularly, you are getting the same deal on iTunes as you are with cable. Any more than that and cable starts to win the value competition, and that’s without factoring in shows that don’t offer a season pass, like The Daily Show in Canada.

But television fulfills a second purpose of background available-anytime entertainment. When you buy a cable TV package, you’re buying a few channels you enjoy, several you don’t care about, and a few that you might watch occasionally. The current Apple TV model cannot satisfy this second requirement effectively, and it would take a massive and highly-unlikely contract renegotiation to make it work.

Granted, the Apple TV has YouTube and Vimeo, both of which have excellent discoverable content. This is still amateur content, for the most part, and that quality creates a mental schism for many people who want to watch professionally-produced shows. It also lacks the familiarity of a channel like TSN1 or National Geographic which have an expected genre of content.

Apple needs their equivalent of channels. A way to stream video at any time in any genre. Apple, in essence, needs to become an internet cable TV provider for their television to fulfill the duties of a regular set2 in a distinctly Apple fashion.

Apple has packed almost everything involving media (and app) management, purchase, and playback into this single app. It’s bursting at the seams. It’s a complete mess. And it’s time for an overhaul.

Snell, like everyone else who has levelled criticism of iTunes, has a good point here. It’s easy to point out that iTunes is broken because this is a point that everyone who uses it seems to agree upon. However, I want to take a look at why it is broken, and what needs to be fixed.

As I see it, iTunes performs three major functions, plus one additional: it organizes and plays media (including apps), it syncs media to other devices, and it allows for the purchase of media. The “+1″ is iTunes Ping, which is that social network you’ve forgotten about. These aspects are viewed by many as unique and disparate, and should be treated as such. Snell, again:

It might be better off being split into separate apps, one devoted to device syncing, one devoted to media playback. (And perhaps the iTunes Store could be broken out separately too? When Apple introduced the Mac App Store, it didn’t roll it into iTunes, but gave it its own app.)

Au contriare, I contend that these functions are intertwined and necessary for each other. For now, though, I’ll critique them separately.

Media Playback

iTunes began as a simple music jukebox in January, 20011. It had a big list of every song you owned, a panel that displayed the currently-playing song, a search interface, and that was about it. When the iPod was released in October of the same year, iTunes gained some syncing features. When the iTunes Store was introduced, it was added to the desktop application. When the Store began selling music videos, movie playback made its way into iTunes. And so on, for every new feature: ringtones, audiobooks, podcasts, the iPhone, Apple TV, and Genius.

Media playback is at the core of iTunes. But it has struggled to cope in the wake of these new additions. Music organization, for example, is difficult despite numerous UI overhauls. All jukebox apps have a list view, which is information-dense, but is impenetrable with a library of more than a few hundred songs. In iTunes 8, Apple introduced a “Grid” view, which is good for moderate-sized libraries that are perfectly tagged with album artwork. Cover Flow, introduced in iTunes version who-gives-a-crap, is a fancy way of showing the list view with album artwork, but is also challenging for more than a few dozen albums.

The best view in iTunes, by far, is the hybrid view, which looks like the list view with album covers in the left-hand column. It’s quick to spot an album that you’re looking for, and works in a logical, hierarchical fashion. It still is not a great way to browse a large library, though. Combined with the browser, it is acceptable, but only just.

The problems facing the most rudimentary aspect of iTunes illustrates the complexity of the challenges Apple’s user interface designers are undertaking. There has to be a better way to catalogue a lot of media and display it in an efficient, logical way. Apple has succeeded, in my opinion, with the Music interface on the iPhone. I have around 3,500 songs on my iPhone, and it’s as easy to find a specific song as it is to shuffle the entire library. Of course, the iPhone has the unique qualities of a smaller display with a touch interface, so the UI cannot be directly ported. The inherent ideas are strong, however.

Purchasing

If it’s difficult to design an interface for organizing a library of 3,000 songs that scales well to 30,000 songs, it’s damn near impossible for a library of 17 million songs. The iTunes Store is an enormous catalogue of music, movies, TV shows, podcasts, books, and applications. Each of these are similar insomuch as they all are purchased and downloaded through iTunes, but that’s where things get complicated.

Much in the same way that music and movies have different browsing interfaces in iTunes, so must they have different purchasing interfaces. Different information is required about each, and Apple has succeeded here. Likewise for apps, podcasts, and books.

Where they have arguably failed is in the discovery of media. Ping was an attempt to create this atmosphere, but it has been largely unsuccessful. Genius recommendations are often decent, but buried in amongst a confusing interface. The Store is not an easy problem, obviously, but its entire workflow needs to be reconsidered for a better discovery path to emerge.

Syncing

Ah, the one feature everyone loves to hate.

iTunes syncing is unbelievably slow. Every time I drop my iPhone into my dock to add an album, it first has to back up its contents, figure out what needs to be changed, make the changes, and then verify it. Overall, this can take upwards of ten minutes, which is simply too long in 2012. Every step of the syncing process is important, however one gets the feeling that it should be quicker.

The verification process at the end of any sync is the part that kills me. I’ve been fairly lucky, but I know of a number of people who have high failure rates. But for it to improperly sync even once is a major issue. I have been copying files onto external hard drives on a daily basis for years and have never seen an error. I recognise that syncing and copying are two different concepts, but they use the same underlying principles. Syncing should never fail.

Finally, the syncing interface is clunky at best. App management is terrible, and the syncing interface doesn’t scale with the window 2. Syncing is, hands-down, the worst individual element of iTunes as it stands today.

Monolithic vs. Modular

Should iTunes be separated into three distinct applications, then? Perhaps one for playback, one for purchasing, and one for syncing? You can get a taste of what this might be like by double-clicking items in the sidebar to separate them into their own window. Go ahead; I’ll wait.

Sucks, doesn’t it?

There are three distinct tasks here, but each are as vital to another as you’d think. Separating iTunes into different applications would be like moving the “import” function in Aperture or iMovie to another application. This is without even considering the nightmare it would be to port three applications to Windows instead of one.

People often refer to iTunes as a victim of bloat, but I disagree. I see bloat as an application gaining features far beyond its scope, such as a word processor with website creation features. If iTunes were as fast as any other application, I doubt we would hear arguments of bloat, because the features it has gained over the years make sense for its role. It’s a clunky beast, but it would suck worse if it were three mediocre ones. Think of it as Thor, instead of the Lernaean Hydra.

Maybe they’ll change the icon to a big-ass hammer to match.

To sum up, the BookBook for iPhone is a magnificent achievement. The concept of combining a wallet and phone case isn’t a new one, but Twelve South’s execution of that idea is nearly perfect.

“Nearly perfect” was how I described the product two weeks after I purchased it. That didn’t last though, and neither did the case. A little over six months after the first review, I followed up:

If you don’t like reading a few more paragraphs, here’s the short version: I abandoned my BookBook.

I cited a few problems I had with the case, the most serious of which was that it fell apart:

A short time after writing my review, the first problems started to occur. Its tech specs suggest a 3-4 card capacity, plus a small stack of paper-based products in the inner pocket. Even though I remained comfortably within those specs, the seam between the card sleeves and the inner pocket tore wide open.

In addition, I noted that the plastic covering the clear identification pocket was wrinkled, and that it left a gooey residue on my iPhone’s display when it was closed. Also, I noted that I felt the case was too large to comfortably sit in my pants pocket, especially when seated.

Twelve South, the makers of the BookBook, were quick to email me. They offered to send me a brand new case free of charge. While I thought it unlikely that my opinion would change, I took them up on that offer.

Here’s the problem: I’ve been using my replacement case now for 55 days and I’m a bit stumped.

I still think the case is a bit too thick. I don’t wear matchstick jeans, but nor do I wear cargo pants. I don’t have to remove my iPhone when I sit down, but when it’s in the BookBook, I do. My replacement case also leaves the same gummy residue on the display. It is more of a nuisance than anything, but I’d rather my case didn’t make my phone gross.1

On my replacement case, the strip of leather just above the proximity sensor blocks it. After finishing a phone call, I need to push the iPhone to the bottom of the case in order for the screen to turn back on. This seems to be an inconsistent issue, as my original BookBook offers the correct amount of space.

Last in my list of complaints is the lack of a camera hole. I take a lot of photos on my phone, and removing it each time is a bit of a hassle, and increases the chance that I’ll miss a moment.

Having said all that, my replacement case is of decidedly better build quality. I also find it enormously convenient, as it reduces what I leave the house with in a very elegant manner. And it is, of course, beautiful. I can’t count the number of times people have commented on how good it looks (though a few people have noted that it looks like a miniature Bible).

This is a great wallet-type case, and probably the best of that type. I don’t think I can recommend it in good conscience, however, due to the issues I’ve mentioned. They’re not big issues, but when combined, they make for a worse user experience than a separate phone and wallet. That’s the clincher.

Citations and footnotes have been improved. This has been made possible through Michel Fortin’s quite excellent PHP Markdown Extra plugin, with a slight modification to change his <sup> tags into <cite> ones. I really am quite the pedant. They should also render more correctly in RSS readers, in theory, and they improve my writing experience because Fortin’s plugin automatically creates backlinks.

The second improvement concerns permalinks. For the longest time, any link log item used the permalink from the day with the post ID hashed onto the end, in the form http://nickheer.com/2012/04/24/#post-3667. This isn’t bad—it’s certainly usable—but it wasn’t up to my satisfaction. This is changing effective immediately when I begin using the Daring Fireball Linked List WordPress plugin, instead of Page Links To. This has allowed me to create proper permalinks to link log items.

Neither of these changes are retroactive, as correcting the thousand-or-so links I’ve posted in the past year would be a tedious task, to say the very least. However, going forward, all permalinks and citations will be much improved.

If you’d like to find out more about the madness of creating a link log or linked list in WordPress, I’ve written a brief “how-to” guide.

During the months preceding the new iPad’s launch I, like many others, assumed this process was an integral part of what Apple considered a “retina” display:

The second improvement comes from the lamination process they will presumably use to place this panel under the glass. It’s going to look like a live magazine.

Therefore, you can imagine my surprise when I found out that the new iPad’s display is not laminated to the glass. It was one of the only things I complained about after using it for two weeks. Why isn’t the new iPad’s display laminated?

I emailed a few people at Apple in the hope that one would reply. Of course, none did. Idle speculation probably isn’t productive, but I can think of two reasons why the new iPad doesn’t have a laminated display.

The first regards replacement iPads. Since Apple replaces damaged iPads with refurbished ones at low cost to the customer (sometimes even for free), Apple likely takes a small hit per unit. After consulting with a few Geniuses, one of the most common replacements is due to screen breakage. To create refurbished units, Apple usually only has to replace the glass. But if the glass and a very pricey display panel are laminated, the cost of creating a replacement unit is dramatically higher.

The second possible reason concerns the manufacturing process. From what I know about optical lamination, the process is made riskier with a larger surface area. The iPad’s display is significantly larger than the iPhone’s, and with that size increase, the lamination process has a higher potential for failure. Since the new iPad’s display is one of the most expensive components of the device, this is a point where Apple does not want the process to fail, since an unsuccessful lamination would render a panel useless.

Arguably, the largest feature requests have been addressed. Notifications, for example, were dramatically improved in iOS 5, and multitasking support was added in the prior release. Where does iOS go from here? I’ve separated this mentally into two broad categories: fixes, for current features, and new features. It seems like the OS now requires more of the former than the latter.

Fixes

The notification system in iOS 5 has been an obvious improvement over the previous modal dialog. Gone are the days when you had to decide whether to answer the text message immediately, or forget to do it later. However, Notification Centre still isn’t up to the Apple standards of UI design. The most glaring instance of this is the tiny clear button beside each application’s group of notifications. It’s simply far too small to be functional. The solution isn’t to enlarge the button, but rather to remove it entirely. It shouldn’t be necessary to manually manage notifications in 2012. Ideally, each of these notification groups should automatically clear themselves after a period of time. For example, the reminder notifications I cleared earlier today are still present in Notification Centre, for some reason. This isn’t a bug, but a systemic problem with the current handling of all notifications. They’re present until you deal with them, one by one.

Apple’s next fix concerns Siri. I should provide a full disclosure, in advance of my complaints. In my iPhone 4S review, I wrote:

The biggest hurdle, however, is not technical. It’s mostly because commanding a virtual assistant feels very odd, even if it’s in plain language. I’m sure it’s a bit quicker for me to reply to a text message with my voice, or tell Siri to call someone as opposed to finding their name in my list of contacts. But I really, really do not want to. I’m also the kind of person who will find a secluded area to call someone in public, rather than trying to chat while walking down the street.

I am perhaps not the correct person to be writing about what Siri desperately needs. I use it for adding reminders, setting timers, and checking the weather. Nevertheless, I would like to see its functionality improve.

Foremost, I’d like it to be significantly more accurate. The other day I asked for it to remind me to prepare the asparagus. It interpreted this command as “enter the asparagus” which, aside from being a great name for a rock band, is quite useless. Apple assures me that Siri is a personal assistant, which I can use natural speech to command. But it isn’t contextually sensitive in the way that it should be. I admit that I’m not even close to an expert on how speech recognition software works, but this seems like it could be addressed with better recognition algorithms.

The next necessary improvement is for non-Americans, like myself. Siri absolutely needs to integrate with Maps and Yelp like it does in the States. This functionality is what Apple often demonstrates because it’s impressive and useful. Being able to dictate messages is useful, but the ability to ask for things nearby is futuristic.

Finally, I imagine third-party developers would love the ability to integrate with Siri. It isn’t as simple as it sounds, however, especially from a user interface perspective. Consider scheduling applications. I have three that I use regularly, and targeting each is difficult for a non-human to do. I place appointments with a set time in Agenda, my calendar app. This is easy enough to understand. But it gets tricky for short-form scheduling. I place reminders in the Reminders application, but I place tasks for completion in Clear, my to-do list of choice. The delegation of these tasks is tricky for a machine to understand. It could be specifically stated (“add ‘iOS 6 post’ to my Drafts list in Clear”), but this is inelegant and clunky.

New Features

As I said, I can’t think of any glaring omissions in iOS. Apple added WiFi syncing, a better notifications system, multitasking, copy & paste, and third-party development. The requested features seem to concern current features that are being asked to do more than they shipped with, like the iPhone’s home screen. It’s not a bad system, but it has become cumbersome with a veritable plethora of third-party applications. I have only 67 on my iPhone, but it feels like too many. Folders are a hacky workaround. There has to be a better way.

Shawn Blanc wrote an exceptional post on why this is a big deal:

Rebuilding the Home screen isn’t just about increasing usability. It is also about innovating at that “front-door interface” of how and where we get to the stuff on our devices (you can hardly do anything on your iPhone without going through the Home screen). Moreover, the ramifications of a reimagined Home screen go beyond iOS. As we are now learning via Lion and Mountain Lion, innovation on iOS is a setting of the stage for innovation on OS X.

In a post from earlier this year, Federico Viticci argued the same:

The concept of the Home screen we interact with today is broken because the Home screen wants to be a real, physical, tangible surface while providing access to the gates of the intangible: apps.

It’s a multifaceted problem, and one that cannot easily be solved. I don’t have any ideas on how it could be fixed, but it’s something that Apple is likely concerned with.

In a similar vein, I feel compelled to address home screen widgets. In his “Back to the Mac” keynote, Steve Jobs addressed the concept of OS X and iOS feeding each other. With this in mind, I think widgets would occupy a similar place as Dashboard does in Lion. If Apple does implement widgets, I think they would be placed on a screen to the left of the first home screen, in the area where Spotlight currently sits. The Spotlight interface would likely be integrated into this new screen.

In the Fixes section above, I pointed out the challenges of machines making decisions in a way that us human beings take for granted. I don’t think this is possible quite yet, but my “wouldn’t-it-be-cool-as-shit” idea borrows from Microsoft’s Future Vision video. At 1:26, a “5 Minute Focus” menu is shown, with tasks that the phone thinks can be completed in five minutes. As I noted when the video was released, this would be a great idea to borrow since Microsoft probably won’t ship it.

Others’ Thoughts

Aside from complaining about the current iOS home screen, Federico Viticci has a great iOS 6 wishlist, too. Features that he wants and which I’d agree with include iCloud tab syncing (coming), all-mailbox search, AirDrop, and better multitasking.

Craig Hockenberry, like the rest of us, is tired of having to enter his passcode when he’s at his desk. He’s come up with something called “Homebase” which would adjust settings based on device location. If, for example, your iPhone is within range of your home WiFi base station, it doesn’t require a passcode to unlock it, or for Find my Friends. Very clever.

Lastly, Neven Mrgan is annoyed by the grippers introduced in iOS 5. I’d like to see these improved as well.

That’s my iOS 6 wish list, then. It’s not complete, it isn’t particularly unique, and it likely won’t be fulfilled. But it’s what I believe would dramatically improve my iOS user experience. To what extent these changes will be improved will likely be known in the first half of June, at WWDC, and I’m excited.

Like so many others, I fired up the live blogs at 10 AM local time and waited to see what the then-rumoured iPad 3 would entail. A retina display looked like it was certain, but would it make its way into the $499 model, or would they have to increase prices? Would it have LTE networking, or would Apple save that for the iPhone for marketing purposes? What would happen to the iPad 2? Would it be called iPad HD?

Two hours later, we all knew. Not just us geeks, but seemingly everyone. I walked down the street to grab a coffee between the event and the preorder, and overheard a number of conversations concerning it. What was once a toy for those with $500 to drop has realized itself as a mainstream, common product. And now we knew that this everyday, everyman product would have more pixels than most desktop displays at the exact same starting price. It wouldn’t even carry a suffixed number.

Sorry for breaking your website @pschiller. 1:03 PM, 7 March 2012

After apple.com stopped being broken and started being a website again, I placed my preorder. Black, 16 GB, WiFi-only. Same as always.

March 16

UPS arrived a little under two hours after they guaranteed, and I noted this with my usual subtlety and class:

Toot toot, the turdmobile is here. 1:52 PM, 16 Mar 2012

Unboxed, I fired it up.

The display is the first thing that will grab you. It has to be the first thing that amazes, because it’s the essence of the product. Virtually all functionality exists within those 9.7 diagonal inches, and the new iPad improves every aspect of that. It’s not just the best display in its class, but the best consumer display at any price in any product. It’s brighter and more saturated than the display of the iPad 2, and the difference is immediately noticeable. Whites are white, except for those iPads that were apparently balanced incorrectly. The ubiquitous blue gradient signifying selections within a menu now looks regal, making its counterpart on the iPad 2 look like a bleached pair of jeans in comparison. It’s stunning.

Unfortunately, many of my oft-used apps were not updated within the week-and-a-half post-announcement. Marco Arment worked nonstop to push a major Instapaper update out, but it wasn’t available until the evening. The developers of Twitterrific, Flipboard, and PlainText all issued updates as soon as they could. But while non-retina apps look like crap on the iPhone, the difference is less noticeable on the iPad. That said, nothing compares to a fully-optimised application.

If you own an iPad 2, the next thing you’ll notice is the weight difference. It’s heavier and, while obvious, it is not a burden. It’s still light enough to hold with a single hand, but it would be nice if it went on a diet. Of course, Apple would rather they reduced weight with each generation of any of their portable products. But I would prefer to keep the battery life the same and increase its weight than preserve the weight of the iPad 2 and lose even an an hour of power. That’s exactly what they’ve done. Despite my heavy usage during the first weekend, battery life was never a concern. The combination of a bright display and a seemingly limitless power reserve is pure bliss. It’s the best user experience on any tablet.

There are some who will continue to question Apple’s use of similar designs for different products. This occurred after the iPhone 4S was announced, and has been repeated with the launch of the new iPad. It’s a stupid talking point, really. It advocates for a change in design for the sake of change, and not necessarily for any particular benefit. But there are a number of advantages to keeping a virtually identical design. My Nedrelow Sleeve fits perfectly, as does the Smart Cover, both of which I purchased for my iPad 2.

March 29

There are other little things that become apparent through two weeks of use. The system font has changed from Helvetica to Neue Helvetica. While it’s a barely-noticeable change, a switch back to using regular Helvetica in Pages, for instance, looks clunky and inelegant.

The new iPad also includes a 1 GB RAM package, double the 512 MB package in the iPad 2. It’s a welcome bump, and I’ve seen fewer low memory errors for all applications. Safari used to run into a RAM roadblock with only a few tabs open, but it’s now much more usable for daily browsing.

The dictation feature is nice, but is something I do not regularly use. As I have previously stated, I find the use of voice controls to be awkward and jarring. It’s technically wonderful, but I do not use it frequently. In fact, I’m dictating this right now, but I find it a hollow experience in my living room.

I do have three complaints about this iPad. The first concerns its weight, but as I’ve stated, I believe it was a wise compromise. My second irritation is the lack of screen lamination, which I assumed would be part-and-parcel of what Apple calls a “retina” display. Clearly and disappointingly, this is not the case. I already have a small piece of dust in the gap between the glass and the panel, but my iPhone is dust-free and will remain that way.

My final complaint concerns the camera system. They have improved the camera on the rear, and that’s a welcome upgrade. Apparently, it uses the same sensor as the iPhone 4 which produces some interesting grain and tonal qualities. It’s a decent camera. But Apple didn’t change the front-facing camera, and on a bigger-than-HD display it shows. The iPad is my favourite device with which to videoconference but it has the single worst camera to do so.

Heat problems? Not that I’ve noticed. I am sure it is warmer than my iPad 2, but not dramatically so. It isn’t uncomfortable in any way. To paraphrase Jack Nicholson’s character in the otherwise-mediocre As Good As It Gets, Consumer Reports is like a product review magazine if you take away reason and accountability.

I am not one to suggest that my ideals are those which everybody should agree upon. However, I cannot see a reason to purchase any competing tablet right now. The new iPad is a nearly-perfect product. Apple has managed to put a faster processor, a bigger battery, and a display that was unfathomable just a couple of years ago in a $500 package you can buy today.

But there’s even better news if you’re just dipping your toes in the tablet water, because the iPad 2 is now $400. That’s an insanely good starting price. Yes, it’s still double the price of Amazon’s Kindle, but there are lots of ways to waste $200. But for another $200, you can have last year’s best tablet, and this year’s second-best.

For another hundred, though, you can have the best display ever fitted to a consumer product. That’s a hell of a start to Apple’s year.

Life is short, but that doesn’t preclude you from slowing down and looking around once in a while.

I was looking at the PlayStation Vita the other day, and remembering that, had this product come out two years ago, it would have easily eclipsed the hottest product of that time — the iPad — which cost more and did far less.

I doubt this. The iPad was a huge product. Everyone was speculating and chatting about Apple’s tablet, as they had been since the rumours began several years prior. The hype around the Vita today, or the hype around similar products around the time of the iPad’s launch simply isn’t—and wasn’t—as big as the publicity of the iPad.

Steve Jobs seemed to understand better than most the need to manage perceptions. As Apple’s most influential advocate, when he said a product was wonderful, it was wonderful. From the first iPod (which kind of sucked) to the first iPhone (which really sucked as a phone), we drank his Kool-Aid by the gallon, and raved about these products.

The only reason people buy Apple products is because Steve said we should. The only reason people ever liked the iPhone was because Steve said it was good. Every person who buys an Apple product are too stupid to look elsewhere because they (we) bask in his magnificence.

This is, of course, nonsense.

Now think about tablets. The market had largely rejected them, and Steve Jobs himself initially said that folks would never buy anything without a keyboard. Then he brought out the iPad. And even though it was really just a netbook without a keyboard, folks saw the result as magical and different.

People didn’t buy it because it was an Apple product. People bought it because it ran the same touch-based OS as the iPhone and iPod touch, as opposed to its competitors which ran Windows. Competing products were basically laptops folded in half. The iPad was thinner, lighter, had longer battery life, and ran a touch-optimised operating system.

Without Steve Jobs, the magic is gone. Microsoft built Windows 8 to bridge into tablets and optimized it for that experience. People love Windows 8 because it is an iPad experience without the compromises […]

He’s just reading off the PR package now.

[…] and because Microsoft is assuring early reviewers get a positive experience by making sure they get the right hardware, software, and services wrapper. With Mountain Lion, Apple is doing the more traditional thing of just tossing the product out there.

Mountain Lion is in a developer preview stage. Windows 8 is in a public beta stage. These are completely different.

But without Steve Jobs selling the magic, folks are having a WTF moment. Instead of seeing the world through Steve’s reality distortion field, they are looking at the product critically and finding it lacking.

Nowhere does Enderle cite any early reviews of Mountain Lion, nor make any specific points as to what he thinks reviews dislike. His entire rant hinges on his unsubstantiated, unreferenced statement that 10.8 sucks. And, from what I’ve read so far, reviewers are generally enjoying it. The biggest controversy so far has predictably been Gatekeeper.

This article also relies upon his opinion that Windows 8 is amazing and beloved by reviewers. On the contrary, while the adaption of the Metro interface and the speed of the OS has been widely praised, most seem unconvinced by the combination of a desktop and tablet operating system.

David Pogue:

On a nontouch computer like a laptop or desktop PC, the beauty and grace of Metro feels like a facade that’s covering up the old Windows. It’s two operating systems to learn instead of one.

Matt Warman:

[…] it’s a weird, clunky, stupid duplication. Only Microsoft would provide an operating system with two different versions of its own web browser, available in two different places, with the same name and looks but different capabilities.

Furthermore, the two operating system updates aren’t even comparable. Windows 8′s Metro interface is a radical and interesting reconsideration of standard desktop paradigms. Mountain Lion’s name identifies its purpose as a relative of Lion. There’s no magical tablet interface, but good, solid updates throughout. Of course, Enderle doesn’t mention any of this. In his world, Mountain Lion is an utter failure (“sucks”) and Windows 8 is the future of everything. The reason this is occurring is because Steve Jobs is dead.

Rob Enderle should start mowing lawns. It’s hard to screw up as badly as he did here.

Apple’s competitors see things a little differently. Google, for instance, doesn’t sell products. Rather, they’re an advertising company that uses products and services as advertisement vehicles, much in the same way radio stations have worked for decades. Where Google differs is in the targeting of ads. Radio stations follow a particular format, listened to by a particular demographic. Advertisers can guess at what those listeners might be interested in. Google builds up a silo of data gleaned from your email, web searches, friends on Google+, and videos watched on YouTube. A giant heap of personal information that allows Google to provide services for free which are, for the most part, decent.

Microsoft’s revenue is mostly generated through licensing their software. Around 25% of their revenue comes from hardware sales, which is not insignificant, but cowers in the shadow of Windows and Office. Since Microsoft doesn’t sell computers or phones, the majority of their revenue must come from licensing. Direct sales of their software are always going to be dwarfed by sales to equipment manufacturers.

By contrast, Apple’s business model is simple: make products and sell them. There’s no need for ads in web services because one needs to have an Apple product to make real use out of iCloud. There are no licensing shenanigans to worry about because Apple designs the whole product as a unit. That means customers will receive the same stellar experience no matter what iPhone they buy, rather than the disparate platforms one has to contend with in the Android and Windows Phone families.

Apple’s business strategy is not reliant upon a killer product, like some magic bullet. Every product is a killer product which is improved over time as new features are demanded by consumers. The iPhone and the iPad are both lines of products that have significantly contributed to Apple’s bottom line, but they are in a long line of killer products introduced since 1997. And that’s the big secret: a long period of steady improvement and steady growth, with great products as the backbone.